Mark Burch

Mark’s big weekend

Mark Burch — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:42:49 GMT

I had a big weekend, and I think its blog worthy. I won the BizSpark Azure Camp pitching competition.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ausdev/archive/2010/04/12/bizspark-camp-australia.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/presspass/post/Microsoft-launches-Windows-Azure-in-Australia

Neat huh?

The stupid people window and the smart people window

Mark Burch — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:42:31 GMT

When I commute into the city, I take the train from the local station. As you descend the steps to the platform the station masters building is directly in front and the ticket window is the first thing you see. Beside the ticket window is a ticket machine which is more often than not, out of change. So many times now, have come down on to the platform walked right passed the queue of people at the ticket window and machine, walked around the corner just a little bit and gone right up to the other ticket window that no-one knows is there. Even though there is a queue for the main ticket window and a queue for the machine, just around the corner not more than 12 paces away the other ticket guy sits reading the newspaper. Initially I didn’t know about this ticket window but one day I noticed someone else purposefully disappear around the corner and reappear a few moments later with a ticket in hand.

So basically at my train station there is a ticket window for the masses of stupid people and there is another ticket window for smart people. The reward for being smarter/more aware than most other people is not having the aggravation of waiting in a queue. In the rare time I see other smart people at the smart people ticket window I feel a sense of camaraderie…I want to reach out and high five the strangers I meet there because we share an open secret which most people don’t know. I don’t actually do high fives with strangers, however, because that kind of thing can get you arrested.

But it occurs to me that this is a metaphor for life. You can either queue at the stupid people window or you can just go directly to the smart people window. So which window are you using? How many shortcuts, improvements or opportunities are you missing because you haven’t noticed the other window just off to the side there? Did you just join the back of the queue because you assumed that the queue is the only place to buy your train tickets?

Guide To Understanding Mark’s Status Updates

Mark Burch — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:02:53 GMT

The problem of nuclear waste

Mark Burch — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 12:13:37 GMT

I spend quite a bit of my time reading and thinking about the worlds problems. Maybe this is because thinking about my own problems gets boring after awhile. Very occasionally I am able to indentify a solution to a problem. Unfortunately I’m almost always not qualified enough to comment on the problem or the solution… But not knowing anything about a topic has never stopped me sharing my 2 cents.

Nuclear waste is a particularly vexing problem, for two primary reasons. It has a very long half life and the only thing that can destroy nuclear waste is another even bigger nuclear reaction. That means that the nuclear waste that we create today is being put in barrels and buried underground in various types of facilities. The Scandinavians put their waste in a cave they’ve dug half a kilometre inside a piece of solid rock and then concrete it up again. The Americans load their waste on trains and then just transport around the continental United States in a big loop while they wait for the facility under Yucca mountain to be completed…or not.

But I think we’ve been approaching this all wrong. We’ve been looking down in to the earth for places to hide the waste when we could be looking up into the sky for places to destroy it. And more specially at that gigantic nuclear reactor that passes over our heads everyday…some people call it the sun. Now bear with me here. What better way to get rid of nuclear waste than to drop it into another larger 4 billion year old nuclear reaction?

Yeah and I know what you’re thinking…that's a great idea but how are we going to get it to the sun? Well I’ve got that figured out too. I propose we build a very large trebuchet to just fling the spent fuel rods at the sun everyday as it passes over head. No? You don’t like that idea? Ok well once we’ve figured out how to build a space elevator we could just load them in some kind of shipping container contraption and fix some booster rockets on the back. And then launch them on a one way trip into the sun. By my back of the envelop calculation that shouldn’t be too hard. If we can land a robot on Mars and control it from earth and send a probe out past Uranus we should be able to shoot things at the gravitational centre of our solar system. The sun’s gravity should pull the shipping-container-with-booster-rockets most of the way anyway…all we have to do is point it in the right direction. Right?

Now I know that some environmentalists will be against the idea of flinging nuclear material around the solar system but I would point out that…who cares, we don’t live out in space, we live here on earth….or is that just some more of the myopic thinking that got us here in the first place?

Shark Fins

Mark Burch — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:43:56 GMT

There is just so many things to be outraged about in this stage of human history. What we really need is a global outrage ladder. Somewhere where all the outrageous issues of the day/week/month can be voted up and voted down. Kind of like Eurovision or American Idol but for important things.

Over the last say 12 months there have been various issues that have risen and fallen in outrageousness. The Chinese clamp down on Tibet. Zimbabwe’s ruling elite crippling the entire country. The Tamil Tigers using civilians as human shields. Sri Lanka killing civilians. Japan killing whales in the Antarctic ocean. Food shortages. Executive bonus’s. And the list just goes on and on.

I personally just watched SharkWater. A documentary film about Sharks and one mans quest to protect them. Protect them from illegal fishing, over fishing, and shark finning. Shark finning, has for me, just because I’ve just watched this movie, just gone straight to the top of my personal outrage list, displacing all other outrages.

10s of millions of sharks a year are caught, hauled on to boats, have their fins cut off, and then the carcass tossed overboard. It is so wasteful. So destructive to the oceans ecology. So irrational. So illogical that future generations will dig up our bones from our graves just so they can exact their revenge on our careless, heartless, selfish bone fragments. These fins all end up in Chinese restaurants and banquets. Which is ironic really because Chinese culture and the Confucian ethic is very much about filial piety. But let me tell you something my Chinese brothers and sisters. Your descendants will not be respecting you when they figure out you ate sharks into extinction and caused incalculable harm to the ocean’s ecology. These are creatures which have been around 400 million years, outlived the extinction of the dinosaurs and several other mass extinctions and yet we have, in the last 60 years or so, depleted their numbers by 90%. STOP EATING SHARK FINS!

Ideal Vocation

Mark Burch — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:26:11 GMT

Over the last couple of days I’ve been pondering what my ideal vocation would be. And I think I can conclusively say I’ve narrowed it down to three areas…

If you’ve got some good ideas about actual jobs that fit in that middle bit…let me know :-)

Do you have problems? The toilet paper test.

Mark Burch — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:59:12 GMT

Half the worlds population lives on less than $2 per day.

This is called the toilet paper test. It is designed to help people feel better in a simple and effective way.